There are young musicians who arrive and set the folk world alight with excitement; the late Johnny Cunningham as the schoolboy fireball with Silly Wizard was a a classic example.

There are young musicians who are downright precocious. Then there are young musicians - although probably not too many of them - like Lauren MacColl.

While very much a young woman of the 21st century, MacColl plays fiddle like she's been here before, rendering strathspeys or schottisches as might a contemporary of Niel Gow, say.

A fanciful notion perhaps but certainly there's a snap to her playing of dance tunes and a depth of expression in her slow airs that speaks of an immersion in the tradition much longer than someone in her early twenties would usually attain.

As demonstrated on her recent debut CD, When Leaves Fall, MacColl doesn't go big on the mile a minute playing style that's currently popular, although she can fly through a Scott Skinner hair-raiser with brio when it suits her.

Gaelic ballads, measured pipe marches and what she refers to as chilled jigs - in short, melodies - provide her excitement, and in pianist James Ross and guitarist Barry Reid she has partners who match her subtlety and enhance the rhythm, shape and shadings that she brings to a tune.

It's all beautiful stuff, with Ross providing a startlingly creative piano solo cameo, played from the heart and presented personably, informatively and with impressive impressionistic nous.

When MacColl plays her tribute to Invernessian fiddle wunderkind Graham Mackenzie, you can just picture his cheeky grin, and her reading of Allan MacDonald's The Seventh Wave was eerily true to its graphic introduction.